Story and Photos by

Juan Guajardo

Correspondent

July 19, 2013

Monica Ashour, executive director of Theology of the Body Evangelization Team, talks about same-sex attractions at the Youth For Life Pro-Life Boot Camp 2013 on June 30. More than 35 high schoolers participated in the camp at the University of Dallas campus where they listened to pro-life speakers, did volunteer projects, and prayed at a local abortion facility.

Monica Ashour, executive director of the Theology of the Body Evangelization Team (TOBET), addressed teens attending the 2013 Pro-Life Boot Camp June 30, explaining the Church’s teaching on homosexuality.

She opened her talk by tackling the misconception that the Church is unloving towards those with same-sex attraction.

“We are being flooded by messages that are telling us that the Catholic Church is mean,” Ashour said. “You ever thought about that? The Catholic Church teaches things that are mean and not loving? And who is the Church, or anybody else, to say who we should love and not love? These are the messages that I think are sweeping a lot of us away.”

But in reality, all of the Church’s teachings from the Eucharist and morality, to “the teachings that the Church gives us about homosexuality are actually all about love,” she explained.

She then told her audience why homosexuality is something we cannot accept as good or right, telling them the human body helps them know right from wrong because the body was created in a way that has transcendent meaning.

“Masculinity and femininity, they go together,” she said, explaining that men symbolize sourceness or “he who loves” and women symbolize receptivity or “she who is loved,” and thus marriage is a profound reflection of “God’s very own inner life of love” and a reflection of Christ and his love for the Church and the Church’s receptivity of that love.

“I want to broaden your perspective and let you know that homosexuality is not a side issue and that maybe the Church got it wrong.” The reason the Church has to uphold the fact that people of the same sex should not get married, even if the government starts legalizing homosexual marriage, she said, is because it removes our image of marriage, depriving us of seeing in marriage “the right icon of God Himself and what it means to be a Catholic Christian in union with Jesus.”

She pointed out that homosexuality does not become a sin unless it is acted upon and then reminded her young audience that the Church teaches us to accept every person and to “love them through it,” rather than shun them.

It’s a hot Saturday morning in June and on a sidewalk along Record Crossing Street in Dallas, 37 people are praying the Rosary across from an abortion facility. But these aren’t adults. They’re high-school students and participants in the 2013 Youth for Life Boot Camp, conducted June 28-30 at the University of Dallas.

Monica Ashour, executive director of the Theology of the Body Evangelization Team (TOBET), addressed teens attending the 2013 Pro-Life Boot Camp June 30, explaining the Church’s teaching on homosexuality. She opened her talk by tackling the misconception that the Church is unloving towards those with same-sex attraction.

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